As the first transgender woman to be recognized in the Emmy Awards’ supporting actress in a limited or anthology series or movie category, “Baby Reindeer” star Nava Mau knows that her nomination represents something much bigger than herself.
“In the span of years, there can be one opportunity for someone like me to get to grow as an actor and to be part of a project as meaningful as ‘Baby Reindeer,’ let alone be invited into a deeper space within the industry,” Mau told NBC News. “I think that is true for so many trans actors — really, all of us. We just don’t get that many opportunities, so when they come, we have to make the most of them.”
Mau’s Emmy nod last month marked the culmination of a whirlwind media tour for Netflix’s “Baby Reindeer,” which became a word-of-mouth global hit after premiering in April to critical acclaim. An unflinching exploration of trauma and abuse, “Baby Reindeer,” which began as a one-man play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, was born out of creator, writer and executive producer Richard Gadd’s personal experience of being obsessively pursued by an older woman who frequented the pub where he worked.
In the seven-part series, Gadd plays Donny Dunn, a struggling comedian whose warped relationship with his female stalker, an ex-lawyer named Martha (Jessica Gunning), forces him to confront the severe abuse he endured years earlier at the hands of a prominent television writer who repeatedly drugged and sexually assaulted him. Mau plays Teri, an American-born therapist living in the United Kingdom whom Donny meets on a transgender dating site.
“It was unlike anything I’d ever read before,” Mau, who has previously worked as a peer counselor for immigrant and LGBTQ survivors of violence, said of her initial reaction to the script. “I felt so connected to Teri and also to Richard’s voice as a survivor, as somebody who very clearly wanted to create a work that would connect people through vulnerability. I think that is so powerful.”
Gadd based the romantic relationship between Donny and Teri on his own ill-fated romance with a trans woman. Mau, who could tell that “Baby Reindeer” “was written by someone who had actually known and loved a trans woman,” admitted “there was a lot of beautiful molding that happened on set” with Gadd and the rest of the creative team to fine-tune Teri’s storyline.
“Richard really cared about this story depicting a trans woman, because he understood that the stakes are really high for us when it comes to media representation,” Mau said. “He wanted to depict a trans woman who was powerful, lovable, intelligent, accomplished and very reasonable, so there were lots of moments where I think he really genuinely wanted to know what I thought about the script and the character.”
Mau credited Gadd’s incisive writing for helping her understand Teri’s place in the story, and she even went as far as to create a backstory that Teri’s fears that Donny will no longer love her and will one day leave her stem from the character being abandoned by her father as a child. But, Mau said, she was also inevitably able to draw from some of her own personal experiences.
“I’ve definitely had my fair share of experiences in dating where people did not feel comfortable being open about their own sexuality, about dating a trans woman,” Mau admitted, drawing parallels with the internalized homophobia that Donny feels in the series. “And it’s not just about the public element of dating or relationships. I think shame gets in the way of our ability to have perspective about ourselves and the kind of self-awareness that is needed in relationships.”
While he wants to make a relationship with Teri work, Donny becomes preoccupied with the anxiety of having Martha as a constant presence in his life. Martha shows up regularly to Donny’s place of work and his stand-up comedy shows; harasses him with a barrage of emails, voicemails and social media posts; and she even attacks Teri one evening while screaming homophobic and transphobic language.
“There’s this element of jealousy that I had to find with Teri, when it came to Martha, because Teri is dating this guy that she really likes, and there’s hope that maybe, finally, she’ll have a shot at a relationship,” Mau said. “And now, there’s this other woman who he seems pretty fixated on. He won’t stop talking about her, and she seems to be taking up a lot of space in his life. Why is he not setting boundaries with her? Clearly, as Teri says to Donny in the bar scene, ‘She does something for you. Maybe it’s not so much who she is, but what she gives you.’”
It’s that kind of moral ambiguity that, Mau speculates, has transformed “Baby Reindeer” into a global phenomenon. The series topped Netflix’s TV charts in over 80 countries and reportedly racked up over 84.5 million views.
“The show feels so unique because it does not present people as one thing or the other. It presents people the way I think we all are, which is messy, complicated, hurt and in progress,” she explained. “In our world, especially right now, I think that there’s a lot of hurt and a lot that we’re processing. I think so often, we just have to keep running and we don’t have time to really investigate matters of the heart, so maybe the show has created space for that.”
Mau said she has been “consistently moved” by viewers who have shared “how much it means for them to see a trans woman, a Latina woman, on screen who is empowered, who is entitled to her own needs, who firmly and successfully sets boundaries and ultimately protects her vitality.”
“Sometimes, people are in your life for a very specific reason at a very specific time, and I do get the sense that, in what Richard wrote, maybe that is how Teri and Donny feel about their relationship,” Mau said. “Donny was not in the right place in his journey to meet Teri on her leg of her journey. They needed each other at that time, and now I think it allowed both of them to grow and move on to really transform into different periods of their life.”
In the end, Teri chooses to take care of herself over Donny, Mau noted. “I’ve heard from a few people that it has inspired them to choose themselves in order to be able to live happy and healthy lives, and that’s kind of what we all want, isn’t it?”
The success of “Baby Reindeer” hasn’t been without its controversies. Shortly after the series premiered, Scottish lawyer Fiona Harvey claimed that she was the real-life inspiration for Martha. Harvey sued Netflix last month for more than $170 million, alleging defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. (Gadd has since backed Netflix’s attempts to have the lawsuit thrown out, arguing that the characters in the series were not representations of real people.)
Unmasking the real identity of Martha is “not what the show is about,” Mau said. “The show is about the human condition; the show is about these characters who are broken and trying to find pieces of themselves in each other. And I hope that people can try to let the series speak for itself.”
The cast and crew of “Baby Reindeer” are now hoping to let their work do the talking. The limited series has emerged as a front-runner of the current awards season, winning a Television Critics Association Award and Gotham TV Award and being nominated for 11 Emmys.
On the morning of the Emmy nominations, Mau decided to spend some time journaling in her bed — something she had been unable to do for the last three months — and stayed off her phone. By the time she had finished writing, Mau had already received a flurry of texts, messages and missed calls from family, friends and colleagues — including from her own mother, who was the first person she called upon learning the news.
“I was speechless and crying a lot throughout that entire day,” she recalled with a laugh.
Mau said she has already noticed a shift in the kinds of projects she is being offered. For instance, the producers of “You” — Netflix’s hit psychological thriller series, which stars Penn Badgley as a dangerously charming, intensely obsessive serial killer — personally wrote a letter and recently offered her a key guest-starring role as a detective in the fifth and final season.
“I think that I’m just seeing a wider variety of characters and stories, as opposed to being pigeonholed before,” she said.
The history of exclusion of trans people in mainstream media has resulted in a disproportionate amount of stories that end in violence or tragedy. But the general public doesn’t seem to realize “that trans people are also really funny,” Mau added.
“We have had to advocate for ourselves and fight for our rights, and explain to people that we deserve to be alive and that we belong in the world just as much as anybody else,” she explained. “We have so much life, we have so much spirit, and I would love to see more representations of trans people that lets that spirit shine bright in humor, in action, in adventure, in outer space, in romance.”
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